There
have been hundreds of horrific Stories from the Gas Chambers
of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps. We see here how
uncritically they are seized upon by Robert Jan Van
Pelt who has the chutzpah to say that they contain no
improbable allegations: now click
for the unabridged version of his source

Robert
Jan van Pelt, Professor of Cultural History, School of
Architecture, University of Waterloo, Ontario Canada N2L
3G1

From
Robert Jan Van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz, Evidence
from the Irving Trial (Indiana University Press), pages
167-169.

army,
carried an interview with an Auschwitz
survivor who had been evacuated earlier that year, first to
Buchenwald and
finally to Ohrdruf. He told that "every day some transports
arrived in Auschwitz, each of between 2,000 and 3,000
people," and described the procedure of selection in some
detail: men and women were separated, and "each of these two
groups was again subdivided into two." In the one group were
those above fifty years old and those deemed to be unfit for
work. In the other group were the younger and stronger
people. "Those who belonged to the group of over
50-year-olds -- and to this group also belonged the small
children and mothers who did not want to be separated from
their children -- were immediately killed." Four crematoria
served as killing stations. "Those condemned to death were
led into these crematoria, had to undress themselves, and
were gassed in a hall that was hermetically sealed. Then the
corpses were incinerated in the same
crematorium."104

The name "Auschwitz" turned up again and again. Members
of the British Parliament, who had visited Buchenwald by
invitation of General Eisenhower, were quoted in
The Times of April 28 as saying that many prisoners
told them that conditions in other camps, particularly those
in Eastern Europe, were far worse than at Buchenwald. "The
worst camp of all was said by many to be at Auschwitz; these
men all insisted on showing us their Auschwitz camp numbers,
tattooed in blue on their left forearms."105

As the British Members of Parliament drafted their
report, a special intelligence team of the Psychological
Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied
Expeditionary Forces, headed by Lieutenant Albert G.
Rosenberg, questioned former inmates in an effort to
document the atrocities. They were assisted by a group of
prisoners, headed by Austrian journalist and economist Dr.
Eugen Kogon -- the same Kogon who was to become the
focus of Stäglich's scorn thirty years later.
The team interviewed some 150 people and in the process
gathered a number of important testimonies about Auschwitz
and other extermination camps in the East. It is important
to note that at the time that Rosenberg, Kogon, and their
colleagues took these testimonies, the Soviet commission had
not yet published its results. One
of the witnesses was 15-year-old Janda Weiss, who
had been deported to Birkenau a year earlier with a
transport of 1,500 Jews from Theresienstadt.
He was one of the 98 people of the family camp who was
spared when the Theresienstadt Jews were gassed. As a
kitchen helper, he visited the barracks where the
Sonderkommandos were housed. "These comrades told me about
the horrors of the crematorium, where I would later
work."

I will now describe the crematoriums and the
transports. At me station 2,000 people got off the
trains. They had to throw away all their luggage.
Afterward the men and women were divided into two groups,
at which the larger boys were assigned to the group with
the men. Then the great devourer of Jews, Mengele,
drove by in a car, seeking out the strongest from each
transport. They numbered around thirty out of 2,000. The
remainder were led away by SS Technical Sergeant
Moll, the officer of the crematorium. The elderly
were loaded onto dump trucks and then dumped into burning
trenches while still alive. The remainder were led into
the gas chambers. Meanwhile new transports were arriving.

In front of the gas chamber was a dressing room. On
its walls

Intentional Evidence  167

was written in all languages: "Put shoes into
the cubbyholes and tie them together so you will not lose
them. After the showers you will receive hot coffee."
Here the poor victims undressed themselves and went into
the chamber, There were three columns for the
ventilators, through which the gas poured in. A special
work detail with truncheons drove the people into the
chamber. When the room was full, small children were
thrown in through a window. Moll grabbed infants by their
little legs and smashed their skulls against the wall.
Then the gas was let into the chamber. The lungs of the
victims slowly burst, and after three minutes a loud
clamoring could be heard. Then the chamber was opened,
and those who still showed signs of life were beaten to
death.

The prisoners of the special work details
(Sonderkommandos) then pulled the corpses out, took their
rings off, and cut their hair, which was gathered up, put
in sacks, and shipped to factories. Then they arranged
the corpses in piles of ten each. After Moll had counted
them, they were taken to the ovens, or if the
crematoriums were insufficient, thrown into fire
trenches.106

Kogon was to refer to Weiss's testimony in his book. As
Kogon had never been in Auschwitz, Stäglich felt free,
as we have seen at the beginning of this chapter, to reject
Weiss's testimony. But when we consider the evidentiary
value of Weiss's statement following Stäglich's
hermeneutical rules, we must conclude that it should be
taken seriously. He made specific allegations and he
provided specific details, such as the name of the man in
charge of the crematoria (Moll) and details of the
undressing room and the gassing apparatus.
Weiss's testimony did not contain
contradictions, nor did it contain improbable
allegations.107

German Jew Walter Blass testified that Jews were
subjected to selection on other occasions after their
arrival. This procedure was a regular occurrence for those
imprisoned in the camp. "Selections occurred at irregular
intervals, sometimes after two or three months, then after
four to five months, then again, as in January 1944, twice
within two weeks." At such a selection, "Jews had to undress
completely and were quickly observed front to rear. Then,
according to whim, they were sent to the right to record the
prisoner number tattooed on the arm; that meant the death
sentence. Or they were sent to the left, that is, back to
the barracks; that meant a prolongation of life." Those who
were sent to the right were locked in specially guarded
barracks. "Often they remained there for two to three days,
usually without food, since they were already considered to
be 'disposed of."'108

The interest in the camps generated by Belsen and
Buchenwald and the various references appearing in the
Western press to Auschwitz offered the Polish
government-in-exile a good opportunity to present the
atrocities of Auschwitz to the Western public. The first
substantial report to appear after the liberation of
Auschwitz was entitled "Polish Women in German Concentration
Camps," and it was published in the May 1, 1945, issue of
the Polish Fortnightly Review. The article consisted of two
eyewitness testimonies, some statistics, and a note on
medical experiments in the women's camp. The first testimony
was entitled "An Eyewitnesses's Account of the Women's Camp
at Oswiecim-Brzezmnyka (Birkenau) -- Autumn, 1943, to
Spring, 1944," and like all the other articles published in
the Polish Fortnightly Review, it was anonymous. It
is, however, clear that it was written shortly after the
beginning of the Hungarian Action.
The

168  The Case for Auschwitz

Footnotes:

106. Document 159, "Experiences of a
Fifteen-Year-Old in Birkenau," in The
Buchenwald Report, ed. Hackett, 349.

107. Stäglich, The Auschwitz Myth,
115-116.

David
Irving notes:

Jan
Van Pelt was called as an expert witness by
Professor Deborah Lipstadt's defence lawyers in my
libel action against her. I invite my many friends in the
academic world to contribute more of what they know about
this conformist Holocaust scholar.